Rita Faria’s journal round-up for 4th March 2019

Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot. If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch.

Before I was a health economist, I used to be a pharmacist and worked for a well-known high street chain for some years. My impression was that the stores with in-house cleaners were cleaner, but I didn’t know if this was a true difference, my leftie bias or my small sample size of 2! This new study by Shimaa Elkomy, Graham Cookson and Simon Jones confirms my suspicions, albeit in the context of NHS hospitals, so I couldn’t resist to select it for my round-up.

They looked at how contracted-out services fare in terms of perceived cleanliness, costs and MRSA rate in NHS hospitals. MRSA is a type of hospital-associated infection that is affected by how clean a hospital is.

They found that contracted-out services are cheaper than in-house cleaning, but that perceived cleanliness is worse. Importantly, contracted-out services increase the MRSA rate. In other words, contracting-out cleaning services could harm patients’ health.

This is a fascinating paper that is well worth a read. One wonders if the cost of managing MRSA is more than offset by the savings of contracting-out services. Going a step further, are in-house services cost-effective given the impact on patients’ health and costs of managing infections?

Staying on the topic of value for money, this study by David Wamble and colleagues looks at the extent to which the increased spending in health care in the US has translated into better health outcomes over time.

It’s clearly reassuring that, for 6 out of the 7 conditions they looked at, health outcomes have improved in 2015 compared to 1996. After all, that’s the goal of investing in medical R&D, although it remains unclear how much of this difference can be attributed to health care versus other things that have happened at the same time that could have improved health outcomes.

I wasn’t sure about the inflation adjustment for the costs, so I’d be grateful for your thoughts via comments or Twitter. In my view, we would underestimate the costs if we used medical price inflation indices. This is because these indices reflect the specific increase in prices in health care, such as due to new drugs being priced high at launch. So I understand that the main results use the US Consumer Price Index, which means that this reflects the average increase in prices over time rather than the increase in health care.

However, patients may not have seen their income rise with inflation. This means that the cost of health care may represent a disproportionally greater share of people’s income. And that the inflation adjustment may downplay the impact of health care costs on people’s pockets.

This study caught my eye and it is quite thought-provoking. It’s a good addition to the literature on the cost-effectiveness of US health care. But I’d wager that the question remains: to what extent is today’s medical care better value for money that in the past?

We all would like to see our research findings influence policy, but how to do this in practice? Well, look no further, as Kathryn Oliver and Paul Cairney reviewed the literature, summarised it in 8 key tips and thought through their implications.

To sum up, it’s not easy to influence policy; advice about how to influence policy is rarely based on empirical evidence, and there are a few risks to trying to become a mover-and-shaker in policy circles.

They discuss three dilemmas in policy engagement. Should academics try to influence policy? How should academics influence policy? What is the purpose of academics’ engagement in policy making?

I particularly enjoyed reading about the approaches to influence policy. Tools such as evidence synthesis and social media should make evidence more accessible, but their effectiveness is unclear. Another approach is to craft stories to create a compelling case for the policy change, which seems to me to be very close to marketing. The third approach is co-production, which they note can give rise to accusations of bias and can have some practical challenges in terms of intellectual property and keeping one’s independence.

I found this paper quite refreshing. It not only boiled down the advice circulating online about how to influence policy into its key messages but also thought through the practical challenges in its application. The impact agenda seems to be here to stay, at least in the UK. This paper is an excellent source of advice on the risks and benefits of trying to navigate the policy world.